surgicalsnack

from a story i'm working on:

It seemed as though the stars were bursting out of puckers in the sky. Some force was pushing them from behind, dislodging them from their stable craters, their nests of fire. I could almost see the angle and curve of their descent if I looked hard enough, squinted just right. They glittered as they fell, but they made no sound. That seemed wrong somehow. Something so big, so substantial should make a sound, some indication of its passing. But there was nothing. Just the small sounds of the night. The hum of rubber over asphalt, the steady breathing of Hocus behind the wheel, dry spicy air whistling around the side mirrors.

I closed my eyes and imagined the stars as machines, vast and complex, masses of wires and gears and circuits and winding cramped tunnels paneled with metal, dimly lit with flicker light as the whole structure slowly died. As the power went, so too did the means of connection to the night. The link became tenuous, then spidery, then nothing, drifting slowly out of the socket and away, pulled toward the planet below.

Years would pass, time would creep, miles would be traversed. The giant machine, once alive, now lifeless and cold, just another mass in a void. When it hits the atmosphere, it burns. Flames eat it, erode the shape of what it once was, until it disappears in a puff of ash, shining brightly one last time.

Is that whats in store for me? Do we all start as something greater, only to be refined by fire to feeble husks, obeying only natural laws with no propulsion of our own? If so, what stage are we in? Where along that line do we reside? I want to find out, but sleep takes me again, and I descend. Just falling, no flames.